


Seeing Red

by calswrites



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Brightwell, F/M, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Drunk Driving, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22043494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calswrites/pseuds/calswrites
Summary: Bright wasn’t a big fan of holidays. As a kid, he loved Christmas and New Year’s because it meant presents and no school, but as he got older and his family fell apart, he grew a disinterest in them. To him, they were just constant reminders that his father was one of the most notorious serial killers and that, no matter how hard they tried, his family would never be ‘normal’. He had been to a couple of Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties when he stayed over at Gil and Jackie’s, but he was never one for crowds either.“You know, you could always come over to my place. It would just be me since, since I don’t really have many friends, but I figured I would put that out there in case you ever wanted company.”
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	Seeing Red

Bright wasn’t a big fan of holidays. As a kid, he loved Christmas and New Year’s because it meant presents and no school, but as he got older and his family fell apart, he grew a disinterest in them. To him, they were just constant reminders that his father was one of the most notorious serial killers and that, no matter how hard they tried, his family would never be ‘normal’. He had been to a couple of Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties when he stayed over at Gil and Jackie’s, but he was never one for crowds either.

The NYPD hardly got a proper break during the holidays. There was always someone getting hammered to the point where they had to be called in, and it was never pretty. For Bright, it was something to keep him distracted from the seasonal depression that usually came with the change in the weather.

However, Gil had given him, JT, and Dani the rest of the night off for New Year’s Eve and the following day, insisting that if there was something that he really needed them for, he would call them.

“Got any plans?” Dani asked the guys as the three of them walked out of the building together.

Since she didn’t specify who she was directing it at, JT answered first, “Tally’s mom hosts a New Year’s Eve party every year, so we’ll probably try and catch that.”

When Bright didn’t chime in with an answer, Dani prompted him again. “What about you?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing. Parties… aren’t really my thing.”

“Wow, I never would’ve guessed,” JT teased, earning an elbow in the ribs from Dani.

“Dude.” She knew that it was lighthearted, but she also knew that sometimes it was hard for Bright to differentiate what was meant to hurt him and what wasn’t. JT was the first to break off since he had parked the closest. “You know, you could always come over to my place. It would just be me since, since I don’t really have many friends, but I figured I would put that out there in case you ever wanted company.”

Dani was waiting with Bright until his Uber got there to make sure that he got in safely. She had heard too many stories and investigated too many kidnappings to not be suspicious of everything. “Thanks. Happy New Year,” he said, a bit of a smile tugging at the ends of his lips.

“Happy New Year.” She waved to him through the window as the car drove off. She knew deep down that it was a long shot that he was going to want to spend New Year’s with her. They had only known each other for a couple of months and neither one of them were too keen on trusting people, but she had a little bit of hope.

Nevertheless, she walked back to her car and headed in the opposite direction that she had just seen Bright go. On her way home, she got an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was a mix between butterflies and a kidney stone. She tried to shake it off as she got home, changing into more comfortable clothes and setting herself up with a glass of wine to help her relax a bit.

Malcolm’s mind never stopped moving, but during the ride back to his apartment, he couldn’t stop thinking about Dani’s offer. It was a small thing, sure, but he had never had anyone offer him something like that out of the blue. It didn’t seem out of pity either which was certainly a change of pace for him, but he wasn’t going to complain. But most of all, he couldn’t stop thinking about whether he should actually take her up on it. 

A couple of hours had passed since Dani had gotten home and it was getting late, so she started to doze off on her couch. That is until someone decided to knock at her front door. She blinked a couple of times to register what was happening and then she realized that it could be Malcolm. She quickly sprung to her feet, but then took a second to asses herself. Were grey sweatpants and a sweater that was way too big for her the look she was going for?

“Mm, fuck it,” she mumbled, heading to the door anyways. If he was overdressed, which he usually was, she could always take a couple of minutes to clean herself up for him. “Hey,” she said softly as she saw him standing on her doormat, suit and all.

“Hi. I, uh, I hope you don’t mind that I—”

“Not at all.” She didn’t need him to ramble on about how he wasn’t sure if she really wanted him there, because she did. “Please, come in. But, if you start to profile me based on what’s in my house, I have no choice but to kick you out,” she warned.

“Okay, okay.” He laughed a little bit, a sound that had been unfamiliar to both Dani and to himself, but it made both of them smile.

“Make yourself at home. I’m just gonna go… fix this.” She gestured to her current outfit before pivoting towards where her bedroom was. 

Bright was going to object and insist that she looked beautiful the way she was because she did, but he couldn’t help but wonder what she could possibly ‘fix’. And despite her previous warning, he couldn’t help but look around and craft a persona of who Detective Powell was when she was just Dani.

He noticed the very minimal decorations, which confirmed the fact that she was devoted to her work. Whatever decorations there were, were photos of her and who he assumed to be her sister or her best friend. But there was none of her mother or her father or anyone else as a matter of fact. He took the frame into his notoriously shaky hands to study it a bit closer.

“Okay, I’m—” Her words caught in her throat and she froze when she saw him holding the distressed wood of the picture frame that she had spent years of her life staring at.

He quickly glanced up at the sound of her voice. “Dani, I… I’m sorry.” He put the frame on the mantle where it had sat for what he assumed was the entirety of the time she had lived here.

Her face quickly changed, forcing a smile. “No worries.” She took a couple of steps towards him, her knees still a bit stiff. Bright took the time to scan her now, taking in the transformation that she had just performed in a couple of minutes.

She had traded in her sweater and sweatpants for a red mini dress that hugged her curves in all the right places and ended mid-thigh. It was her go-to for impressing people. She hadn’t done too much else except for a bit of mascara and some lip gloss, but she had chosen to go barefoot. He was only taller than her by about an inch and she didn’t want to mess up the ratio that she had gotten fairly used to over the past couple of months.

“You, uh, you look beautiful,” he said once he was able to take in all of her. He didn’t want to push her about who the girl was. If she felt that their level of trust was there, then she could bring it up, but he wasn’t going to be the one to push the boundaries. He had learned from his past that pushing people beyond their breaking point was usually what led him to be such a hopeless romantic.

Dani’s cheeks flushed a little bit at his comment, but she returned it with a simple, “Thanks.” She started to walk into her small kitchen, trying to push whatever thoughts she was having to the back of her mind. “Do you want wine, champagne, anything?”

“Oh, no thanks. Substances and I don’t really… mix well, no matter how low the concentration. But if anyone was to know that, it would be you.” He only vaguely remembered her having to babysit him not once, but twice, but he still appreciated how she took care of him when he was clearly not in the right headspace to be making his own decisions.

She let out a small giggle, instinctively going to cover her mouth with her hand. It was a thing she did almost normally, but Bright had taken notice of it almost every time she had done it. She wasn’t one to laugh a lot, but she hid it when she did. “Right, how could I forget?” She picked up her wine glass from before and quickly rinsed it out before going to join him by her couch.

“This is a really nice place,” he said after a couple of seconds of silence had gone by.

“Thanks. It’s tiny compared to yours, but I’m not here all that much, so…” she trailed off, the words leaving her mind as she stared into his eyes. She had tried so hard to figure out what color they were – blue, green, a mix of both? – that she often found herself getting lost in them.

He didn’t mind, though.

They stayed there for a little bit, just enjoying each other’s presence and communicating things that words failed to. It was Dani who broke their silence. “Right, uh, anyways… New Year’s.”  
Bright furrowed his brows slightly at her. “That, that didn’t make sense.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her, taking a seat on one side of the couch, leaving plenty of room for her if she didn’t want to sit near him.

To his surprise, she chose to sit where their thighs were within centimeters of touching. Her dress rode up slightly, but she made no move to fix it. “Do you want to watch the ball drop?” She realized that it was getting pretty close to midnight and she knew that if she didn’t ask now, she would forget about it.

“You mean on TV, right?”

“Yes, yes, totally. I’m not about to go freeze my ass off.” She reached over him to get the remote that sat on the table. He held his breath as she got the closest she had ever been to him (at least, that he can fully remember) and tried to let it out as slow as he could when she sat back up, hoping that she hadn’t noticed.

She had, but she enjoyed seeing that she made him a little bit nervous. She turned to any number of channels and let one play, not really caring much about which one she chose. They had a clock counting down to the new year and she realized that they still had around half an hour left.

“She was killed in a car accident.”

“What?” Bright was a bit confused by the sudden change in the subject but was more than eager to listen to whatever she had to say.

“The girl in the photograph. H-Her name was Madison, but she wanted to be called Madi a-and have it spelled like my name. We used to live across the street from each other when we were kids and, God, we were the kind of friends that you dream about having. Inseparable.” Just the thought of her was making Dani tear up, but she needed to keep going.

“We had our share of fights, but… we always made up. There was one night where we went to a party in our junior year of high school. I was with some guy at the time, his name was Austin. He was just some dumb guy, but I-I thought that he was my forever. Anyways, we were drinking, an-and one thing led to another and him and Madi, you know… and I was fucking pissed. I said things that I would give anything to take back and I stormed out. Called myself a ride and went home.” Bright placed his hand lightly on her knee to give her a small sense of comfort, even if it didn’t seem like it did much, it helped her immensely.

“She got in a car wi-with someone who had also been drinking. They ran a-a red light and…” Dani tried to repress her tears. She told herself not to cry in front of someone that she hardly knew, but Bright wrapped his arms around her and she broke.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her as she let all of her emotions out. He could feel the tension leave her body with every tear that fell down her cheek. He could feel her pain with every heart-stopping sob that she let out.

He held her for however long it was. Time froze for them. Dani had never trusted anyone with that deeply personal information and yet here she was, pouring her heart out to a man that she met a few months ago. She didn’t really mind, though, because she felt a level of unspoken trust between them. The feeling in her stomach had resurfaced. 

It was closure.

Or the closest thing she was going to get. She needed to take the responsibility for someone else’s death off of her shoulders. She was never going to fully accomplish that because there would always be a part of her, deep down, that believed it, but she needed to tell someone else to even lift a part of the weight she had been holding.

After a while, she stopped crying but stayed in Bright’s arms. She felt a sense of comfort with him that allowed her to trust him as deeply as she did. She adjusted her position slightly so that they were both more comfortable and that’s when she looked into his eyes and wasn’t scared that he would break her open. She had already done that for him.

He cautiously reached up to wipe away a stray tear for her with the pad of his thumb, letting his hand linger on her cheek. Dani didn’t really know what they were doing, but she had let her heart lead her this far, so she decided to follow it for a bit longer.

She leaned in so that their lips were touching, but neither one of them moved just yet. “Thank you,” she whispered softly before allowing her lips to interlock with his. 

Their kiss was brief, but it was all they needed. Dani laid her head on Bright’s shoulder and gently laced her fingers in between his. “Happy New Year, Dani,” he said once he heard the commotion that was playing on the TV.

“Happy New Year, Bright.”

**Author's Note:**

> So... I set out to write some Brightwell fluff to give myself a bit of a break from the chaos that is currently my life, but then, in natural Callie fashion, I made it kinda dark, so there's that, but there's still a decent amount of fluff (I think). But anyway, I hope y'all liked this and Happy New Year!


End file.
